As it says on the tin, I started Trails into Reverie last night. I'm actually currently in the middle of a play session right now as I'm typing this, but I got a call from work while doing a dungeon, and am now stuck waiting for responses before I can go back to relaxing and gaming. Figured no better time than now to start typing something up so I'm at least doing something. I think this issue I got called about is resolved now, just waiting for confirmation... Gotta admit, and my friends already know this, but being on call most evenings after already working around 10 hours is hell.
Anyway, so far Trails into Reverie is very enjoyable. Lots of characters I was really hoping to see again returned, and I'm really curious where the story will go. I was a little worried about starting Reverie because I was getting so burnt out from Cold Steel. The pacing in those games honestly got brutal sometimes. I generally like a lot of the character moments in these games, but Cold Steel had a lot of "Go to this place and talk to everyone. Now they've all moved, go talk to them again. Now do it a third time." scenarios. I was really eager to go through them the first time, but every time it would cycle into a "Talk to everyone again" I'd start getting a little exhausted and just want to move the plot along again. I think the biggest weakness in that series of games was how they delivered plot points on past events. When something is currently happening, the story telling can be really engrossing, but a lot of the dialogue centred on exposition is just people telling you "I was doing this the whole time." or "This event happened once before." then going into extensive detail on it. Which is fine honestly, but it will let those things build up then drop them on you all at once and then you spend 2 hours having to talk to people over and over while you already know something huge is just around the corner.
Still though, I enjoyed the Cold Steel games a lot. It felt very "Shounen manga"-esque to me. I've been told that Reverie is when the series starts returning to its peaks again like in the Sky and Crossbell games so I'm really looking forward to what's in store. I am going to try rushing through the game on weekends though. I'm hoping to be done with Reverie by the 11th of February so I can play Yakuza Kiwami 3 on release, and after that I'm hoping to be done that just in time for Resident Evil 9's release... It's going to be a pretty stacked February I think, but a good one. I'm expecting Kiwami 3 to have some disappointing factors like the redesign of Rikiya, and the removal of Revelations. I think the combat will still be really fun, and I don't think any substories they add can be any worse than the ones in the original Yakuza 3. I've also gotten way more comfortable with playing games in Japanese now, able to play long sessions without having to give my brain some time to relax. I think I should be able to either finish it, or just make some really substantial progress in Kiwami 3 before RE9 comes out, especially since I'll be starting K3 on a 4-day weekend.
After those games I don't really have any plans set in stone though. I'm planning on focusing more on playing games in Japanese and watching more anime without subtitles, but I might just pick what I play based on vibes. I still want to continue Assassin's Creed Shadows, but I've also got other RPG's I want to play. I've been waiting a few years to sink my teeth into One Piece Odyssey, but I've also got Magical Girl With Trials, Rain Code, Hundred Line... I've got a pretty long list actually, I even set up secondary Backloggd and Anilist profiles just to kind of keep track of it.
The secondary Backloggd and Anilist profiles are also so I can journal my practice sessions. I didn't get anywhere near as much Japanese practice in 2025 as I intended, so having an active journal to keep track of what I've played/watched/read is to give myself some form of accountability. It's also a motivator that gives me some visible, tangible metric for how much I've practised.
Well, I think the on-call issues are pretty much resolved for now. I'll get back to Trails right away, but it was a nice and kind of convenient excuse to type some stuff up.
No comments:
Post a Comment